Denise Levertov Quotes

And not till he saw the angel had left him, alone and free to resume the ecstatic, dangerous, wearisome roads of what he had still to do, not till then did he recognize this was no dream.

Leaps of nerve, heart — cries of communion: if there is bliss, it has been already and will be; out- reaching, utterly. Blind to itself, flooded with otherness.

The wind, the birds, do not sound poorer but clearer,
recalling our agony, and the way we danced.

I was the first to see him, for I grew out on the pasture slope, beyond the forest. He was a man, it seemed. . .

One can anyway only be shown something one knows already, needs already. Showing anyone anything really amounts to removing the last thin film that prevents their seeing what they are looking at.

pure dust that is all in all. Bless, weightless Spirit. Drink Caliban, push your tongue heavy into the calyx.

I love them for finding what I can't find, and for loving me for the line I wrote, and for forgetting it so that a thousand times, till death finds them, they may discover it again, in other lines in other happenings. And for wanting to know it, for assuming there is such a secret, yes, for that most of all.

Each minute the last minute.

Trying to remember old dreams. A voice. Who came in.
And meanwhile the rain, all day, all evening,
quiet steady sound. Before it grew too dark
watched the blue iris leaning under the rain,
the flame of the poppies guttered and went out.
A voice. Almost recalled. There have been times
the gods entered. Entered a room, a cave?
A long enclosure where I was, the fourth wall of it
too distant or too dark to see. The birds are silent,
no moths at the lit windows. Only a swaying rosebush
pierces the table’s reflection, raindrops gazing from it.
There have been hands laid on my shoulders.
What has been said to me,
how has my life replied?
The rain, the rain...

When he opens his eyes he gives to what he gazes at the recognition no look ever before granted it. It becomes a word.

To serve the people, one must write for the ideal reader. Only for the ideal reader. And who or what is that ideal reader? God. One must imagine, One must deeply imagine

Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney's shadow.

A certain day became a presence to me; there it was, confronting me - a sky, air, light: a being. And before it started to descend from the height of noon, it leaned over and struck my shoulder as if with the flat of a sword, granting me honor and a task. The day's blow rang out, metallic - or it was I, a bell awakened, and what I heard was my whole self saying and singing what it knew: I can.

and nothing was burning, nothing but I,

Then as he sang it was no longer sounds only that made the music: he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language came into my roots out of the earth, into my bark out of the air, into the pores of my greenest shoots gently as dew and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.